Volunteering in the service of Mother Teresa

The two weeks of my volunteering at the Missionary of Charity are slowly coming to an end. They were two weeks that have definitely enriched my life, that were educational and beautiful, that have sometimes pushed me to my limits.
Limits that have been shown to me through working with the sick, aging, abandoned people, with the orphan children and the dying. One experience at the elderly home, Prem Dan, was when I assisted a nurse who was taking care of an old bedridden woman with huge open and infected wounds, some of which the bones were visible. It was a special challenge for me, who almost lost consciousness at the slightest cut. But you learn to deal with it and not focus on the extent or cruelty of the injury, but rather to take care of the suffering woman enduring great pain. These are women who have been left alone and who would still lie on the streets and be exposed to poverty and hunger without the help of the nuns.

The hours at Prem Dan and Shishu Bavan, the children's home, were unique and I leave Kolkata with a heavy heart - the city that initially shocked me and whose noise, people, streets, dirt, poverty and beauty have grown closer to my heart. Living together and working together with many other volunteers from all over the world have brought us closer together as a community day by day. Every volunteer has come to Kolkata with a different story, for a different reason, and with different conditions. There was an Andalusian whose mission was to do social work in a different country every month during his one-year journey. A medical student from Bologna whose professor recommended going to India during a lecture on tropical medicine to help. A Spanish pensioner who has been coming here for years to refocus on what is essential. An American in high heels who is actually on a business trip to Kolkata and spontaneously helps out for a day based on a recommendation in the travel guide. A social worker from Munich who has made volunteering her annual holiday sacrifice for the third time. Or myself, who just wanted to start my three-month Asia trip with two weeks of volunteering, maybe to become more aware of the luxury of being able to travel from country to country, to be treated as a tourist everywhere, and to be able to return to the safe harbor of home at any time, far from poverty and social ills.

We were all connected during this time, and despite the sometimes disturbing and shocking experiences, these two weeks have brought me a lot of peace. The daily work with the children and elderly, the early morning Masses with the nuns, and the communal breakfast with all the other volunteers had something meditative about them. The fact that I walked through the door of the house every day in the year of the canonization of Mother Teresa, where she worked, lived, and died, and where her coffin stands, which people from all over the world visit every day, certainly made this special experience a little more unique.

' So let us be one heart full of love in the heart of God and so share the joy of loving by sharing, helping, loving and serving each other' - St. Teresa of Calcutta